It is common today for people to share information and entertainment content throughout their homes over networks that connect various devices within the home. For example, many people share entertainment content through a local area network (LAN) fashioned as a “mesh network”. A mesh network provides a connection between nodes of the network, whereby each node can communicate with each other node of the network. One such network is the well-known MoCA network which operates in accordance with an industry standard known as MoCA 2.0 published by the Multimedia over Coax Alliance MoCA©.
FIG. 1 is a simplified illustration of a home 100 that has a MoCA network 106. In the example shown in FIG. 1, the MoCA network 106 has four nodes 110, 112, 114, 116. The nodes of the network 106 are all coupled to a coaxial cable that serves as a medium 128. Typically, the medium 128 within a home 100 is coupled to all four of the nodes 110, 112, 114, 116 of the network.
At times, it is desirable to ensure that information sent from one particular node to another can be sent with no more than a predetermined latency (i.e., time between the information being available to be sent and being received). For example, a person can record programming content, such as a movie, on a first node, such as a digital video recorder (DVR) located in the person's living room. If that person would like to watch the movie on a second node, such as a DVR located in the person's bedroom, it is necessary to ensure that the information can flow from the first node to the second node at a rate that will ensure a steady and uninterrupted display of the movie at the second node. The MoCA specification allows a stream of related information to be designated as a “Parameterized Quality of Service (PQoS) flow”. A PQoS Flow is a stream of information flowing from one node to another in which parameterized performance requirements of the flow are guaranteed. In order to guaranty the parameterized performance requirements of the flow, PQoS Flows arc admitted to the network. Accordingly, a PQoS Flow is identified by a list of parameters which are specified when the flow is admitted to the network, at which time the resources required for supporting that flow are reserved in order to guaranty their availability.
In some networks, some nodes within the network are more likely to communicate with other particular nodes within the network. In some such cases, it may be desirable to restrict access to certain nodes within the network or to allow certain flows of data to be admitted in a way that they are available to a limited subset of the nodes of the network. Furthermore, it may be desirable to be able to allocate resources (e.g., bandwidth on the network) to a subset of nodes of the network separately from the allocation of resources to other nodes. In this way, PQoS Flows between some nodes can be admitted if the nodes of the subset have not used all of their allocated resources independent of the amount of resources requested by other nodes of the network. Furthermore, it may be desirable to maintain different privacy considerations for (i.e., access to) content provided by an OSP (e.g., video content) and content of a home owner.
Accordingly, there is presently a need for a mechanism to establish sub networks within a main network to allow resources to be available for allocation to nodes within the sub network without regard for the needs of the remainder of the nodes of the main network.